Minnesota

Omar acknowledges that the Armenian genocide was, in fact, a genocide. She wanted to point out that our foreign policy is driven by politics rather than principle and that she’d like to change that. But the “present” vote alone didn’t communicate that well, and the statement her office put out only further muddied the water. A line about relying on “academic consensus” was misinterpreted to imply that Omar doesn’t think there was consensus about the genocide. She does, and told me over the phone (after initial publication of this piece) that she was not questioning the academic consensus on the genocide, but rather that she wants recognition of genocide to be based on that consensus, not politics. What’s more, the statement seemed to say that we can’t talk about one genocide—of the Armenians in this case—without also discussing other genocides such as those of indigenous Americans or the violence of North American slavery.

She voted “present” to make a statement against a foreign policy of convenience. I’m sure she didn’t want to derail the conversation around the truth of the Armenian genocide or to cause pain to Armenians still searching for justice and recognition. Yet she did both. She’s seeking to make a better politics, but the jury is still out whether she can succeed without alienating people who would otherwise support her.